LITERATURE IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH MUSIC

Abstract

Nowadays, in the time of various media, literature still inspires some popular music bands, like, for instance, French groups Air and Noir désir. In 2003, together with Alessandro Baricco, Air recorded the album City Reading: Tre storie western, where the author reads three western stories taken from his novel City. In Genette’s terminology, these stories represent the hypertext based on the novel as a hypotext. There are some differences between the two, especially because the hypertext is situated in the Wild West in the 19th centurty, while the hypotext is situated in the modern times and includes more characters as well as a more complex story. The role ofthe narrator, a certain girl named Shatzy, is important in both – in hypotext as one of the main characters, and in the hypertext she is intently mentioned as someone who tells the stories. Thelyrics of the French rock band Noir désir seem to continuously contain elements related to the literature, starting from their second album in 1989, until their latest album in 2001 - amely, sometimes are explicitely mentioned words like “poésie”, “écriture”, or the names of some poets, some lyrics treat the literary creation, etc. In their latest album, Des visages des figures, there is also intertextuality, based on quotations of Nerval, some titles well known in literary history, and also some obvious literary influences. These are only two examples out of many showing that literature in France continues to be an important inspiration for the other arts.